One of the most prevalent pressures that Lynch's protagonists face is the destructive social tendency to categorize everyone. "In much of my work," he says, "I describe people who are struggling with who they are, with people's perceptions of them.... People will always have an interest in labeling," or as Slot Machine suggests, insisting that everyone has a slot that they need to locate in order to fit comfortably into an ordered social organization. Lynch sees his work as a direct challenge to this kind of conformist thinking, asserting, "it is up to the individual to escape the label. To grow out of it. To be more than the label says. I sort of tell my readers that all the time." Slot Machine concentrates on a young man— thirteen but often sounding as if he were going on thirty—who would seem particularly vulnerable to the...